Investigating Knowledge Spillovers under Standardization: The Examination of the Patent-Citation Networks in the Mobile Telecommunication Industry

Abstract

The article attempts to elucidate why incumbent standard setters lose their grounds through the knowledge spillovers under standardization. Incumbent standard setters are presumed to control innovations and interfirm divisions of labor by managing the architectural knowledge of the whole product system concerned. We conduct the analysis of patent forward citations on essential patents (SEP: Standard Essential Patent) and proprietary patents in the mobile telecommunication industry. The result shows that by the citations of essential patents from incumbent standard setters, semiconductor suppliers build their proprietary knowledge. The result also reveals that a major semiconductor supplier accelerates such spillovers of architectural knowledge.